Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has in the last year become something of a congressional point man for President Donald Trumps negotiations with Turkey, leading discussions on everything from Ankaras purchase of a Russian missile system over the summer to their more recent incursion into northern Syria.
So when he received a call from a man he thought was Turkeys minister of defense earlier in August, it didnt strike him as unusual. Thank you so much for calling me, Mr. Minister, Graham said. I want to make this a win-win, if we can.
But it wasnt the Turkish defense minister at all. Instead, it was Alexey Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, Russian pranksters with suspected ties to the countrys intelligence services who go by Lexus and Vovan. The duo have become notorious in recent years for their cold calls to unwitting, high-profile Western politicians, including Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, leading some to suspect that theyve had help from the Kremlin, according to The Guardian. (A Schiff spokesman said at the time that the House Intelligence Committee informed appropriate law enforcement and security personnel of the conversation.)
Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Graham, confirmed the calls authenticity to POLITICO. We have been successful in stopping many efforts to prank Senator Graham and the office, but this one slipped through the cracks, he said. They got him.
The substance of Grahams conversation with Stolyarov, who was posing as Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, is newly relevant in light of the South Carolina senators push for sanctions on Turkey as punishment for their offensive against the Kurds in northern Syria. Graham labeled the Kurds a threat to Turkey in the call, seemingly contradicting what he has said publicly in recent days.
Graham also mentions Trumps personal interest in a Turkish bank case in the call that appears to refer to a U.S. case involving Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader and client of Trumps personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that Trump had asked then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017 to help persuade the Justice Department to drop the Zarrab case.
The pranksters conversation with Graham, a Trump ally who has the presidents ear on national security issues, also raises obvious questions about potential security breaches. While the pranks appear on their face to have been relatively harmless, the incident suggests its getting easier for bad actors to elicit sensitive information from policymakers. Stolyarov provided POLITICO with a recording of their call.
In the call, Graham was primarily concerned with getting Turkey back into the F-35 program and urging the defense minister to refrain from using Russias S-400 anti-aircraft weapon system, which was fully delivered to Turkey last month in defiance of requests from the U.S. and NATO.
But Graham also expressed sympathy for Turkeys Kurdish problem and described the Kurds as a threat. Those private comments appear to contradict his public statements this week, in which he criticized Trumps decision to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria because its wrong to abandon the Kurds, who have been strong allies against the Islamic State.
Your YPG Kurdish problem is a big problem, Graham told the pranksters. He was referring to the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, a group that began fighting ISIS as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015with support from the U.S.but is considered a terrorist group by Turkey because of its push to establish an autonomous state for the Kurds on the Turkish-Syrian border.
